EA executive discusses the company's plans for next-gen consoles

The next generation of consoles is upon us (or, depending on your opinion, has already begun with the Wii U), and the big boys in the industry are preparing themselves for the transition. If EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen is to be believed, the company is ready.

At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, Jorgensen implied that EA is more prepared to smoothly move from this generation to the next than it was in previous cycles. He says the reason previous transitions weren’t as easy was due to the larger number of games on the company’s hands.

"We're much more focused now. We've got a core group of ten-to-fifteen titles. We'll stage those in terms of the transition and manage those costs through that,” he said, adding those titles will be more spread out to keep costs down. He also noted how games powered by the Frostbite engine will be easier to translate, as the engine has already been upgraded to next-gen specifications.

While Jorgensen didn’t mention Sony and Microsoft’s upcoming consoles in any detail, he did say he expects them to lack backwards compatibility, require a constant internet connection, and feature connectivity with smartphones and tablets.

"I do think once again without describing the new consoles, you've got to assume they're going to be highly integrated into the living room and the house, and there will be a lot of capability for interaction. I think the console makers have seen what the typical gameplay is today. It's very different than five years ago, or ten years ago. It was typically single gameplay, not dual gameplay or multi game players. So there's going to be some connectivity potential around that to make the game much more exciting.

On the touchy subject of used games (which has been frequently talked about with the coming of the new consoles), Jorgensen admitted that it was a “double-edged sword” in that the used game market is important in keeping retail business alive, even if it means diverting cash away from publishers like EA.

For more on Jorgensen’s next-gen thoughts, look to the source link below.

A writer, journalist, and aspiring storyteller, Peter Grimm has been gaming since the days of the Nintendo 64, and reporting on the goings-on in the World of Gaming since late 2011. His base of writing operations is located within the void between Here and There, or so he would have you think.

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